


Screwing Up History for the Better

by Witchgirl1234



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Established Relationship, F/F, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 02:00:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13847709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Witchgirl1234/pseuds/Witchgirl1234
Summary: Ava dies and Zari hacks history





	Screwing Up History for the Better

**Author's Note:**

> T/W for angst and character death but there is a happy ending

"I don't understand why you don't like it!" Ray whined.

"It's stupid," Zari shot back, "why does this matter so much to you?"

Nate and Ray gasped at the same time and Sara rolled her eyes as she placed the last piece of her breakfast into her mouth.

"What's happening?" someone asked from behind her.

The captain smiled widely and spun around on her chair to the woman entering the room with wet hair and wearing her clothes. Gideon had pointed out to Sara that she could quite easily fabricate clothes for the days when Ava stayed over on the Waverider, but she had told the computer not to mention it. Her girlfriend looked too cute when she was wearing jeans that were slightly too short.

"The children are arguing about Star Wars," Sara replied as Ava came over to her to place a peck on her lips before she sat on the stool next to her.

"What about it?" she asked as she pulled some toast towards her and began to butter it.

"Zari said it was stupid," Nate said, pointing at the totem holder as if he were telling on her for something.

Zari swatted his hand away from her and scowled at the steel man.

Agent Sharpe frowned and looked over to her girlfriend who just shrugged in exasperation as she reached over to steal a bit of Ava's toast to no protest.

"Which one did you watch?" Ava asked calmly.

"Phantom…something…I don't know, I just asked Gideon to play it in order for me!" Zari said rather defensively.

Nate and Ray exchanged a horrified look and the Atom asked, "how could you do that, Gideon?"

"Last time I checked, Mr Palmer, one is numerically before four," the AI answered almost immediately.

Ava rolled her eyes at the indignant look on his face and she said, "Gideon, could you please show Zari episode four when she returns from the mission?"

"Of course, Ava," the super computer replied.

"Why does she get to be called Ava?" Ray asked, "I've been on this ship way longer and Gideon still calls me 'Mr Palmer'!"

"If it helps, she used to call me a bitch," the agent shrugged after she swallowed a piece of toast.

"Yes, I do apologise for that, Agent, but you did try and shoot at the Waverider," Gideon said.

Ava just nodded in agreement and Sara smiled widely at the interaction she was witnessing. When she had become captain of the Legends, she had never considered that she would have the chance to have a girlfriend or boyfriend who would actually fit in with her team. After the failure that was their first date, she had been sure that she still hadn't found it, but then the agent had kissed her and fought pirates with her. Since then, they'd had many dates and none of them had involved a restaurant and Sara knew that this was possibly the happiest she had ever been, even if her younger self had never thought that her dream relationship with be with an agent of the Time Bureau, she knew that this was one incidence in which her life had turned out better than it could have ever if she hadn't gotten on the Queen's Gambit.

She leaned forward and placed a kiss to the taller woman's cheek and the three Legends across the table crinkled their noses in mock disgust.

"They're being mushy again," Zari said, "I'm out."

Once the totem-holder left, it didn't take Nate and Ray too long to also vacate.

Ava laughed as they went and then spun around fully to look at the captain, "why does that freak them out so much?"

Sara shrugged and said, "I guess it's like seeing PDA from their moms."

The agent just shook her head and sighed in faux frustration, "if I had known that dating you would involve adopting your children…"

"You would have done it anyway," Sara replied with a huge grin on her face.

Ava matched her grin and leaned forward to claim a slightly longer kiss on the lips, before she pulled back, "I suppose I had no choice really, you're strangely lovable."

"I love you too, jerk," Sara laughed and kissed the woman again.

s

-The next day-

Sara wasn't sure what happened.

The team (including Ava) had gone out to deal with a moderate level anachronism. It was the usual just grab the historical figure and wipe memories, but then the moderate level went out the window when Nora Dhark had shown up with her father.

Apparently this time, the Dharks brought a gun to a sword fight and they were aiming for someone in particular until another person got in the way.

"Captain Lance," Gideon said softly.

The blonde just shook her head, she already knew what the AI was going to say. It had been hours and it didn't take that long to heal gun shot wounds, something was different this time.

"Sara," Gideon tried again.

The captain swallowed back her tears and looked up at the ceiling so that she no longer had to look at her girlfriend. Ava was deathly pale with all of the usual med bay wires on her. Her shirt was covered in blood, though Sara was sure that there was a lot more on her hands from when she had tried to stop the bleeding.

"What is it, Gideon?" she asked. She had planned to snap, but her voice was too weak to even come out with an edge.

"I'm afraid that Damien Dhark must have laced with bullet with some kind of poison that I have been unable to identify at this time," the AI said.

Tears began to fall down the blonde's cheeks and she slowly shook her head. She knew what the AI was saying, but it was almost as if shaking her head would make it false. An AI from the future could be wrong once in a while right? Sara didn't have to break everything she touched right?

"I have tried the most common antidotes with no positive effects…it is too late captain," Gideon said and she sounded like she was just as upset as Sara.

The blonde swallowed thickly and asked, "how long?"

"Not long," Gideon replied, "a few minutes."

Sara clenched and unclenched her fists a few times before she pulled her chair closer to the bed, "thank you for trying Gideon."

The AI was uncharacteristically silent and the captain reached over to remove a piece of hair that had fallen down into Ava's face. She felt like she should be shouting or screaming at Gideon, telling her that there had to be something that she could do but she found that she just couldn't. There were, of course, possibilities going through her mind of how she could stop this from happening, but she heard her girlfriend's voice in her head telling her that she couldn't stop what was supposed to happen and apparently she was not supposed to live happily ever after.

"I really do love you, jerk," she said with half a laugh and half a sob.

A beeping sound filled the room, which Gideon promptly turned off and Sara looked over to the flatline on the heart monitor. She let out a ragged breath before she leaned over and placed a kiss to the agent's forehead. She stayed in the position for about five seconds as she allowed herself to believe that this wasn't happening.

She wasn't in the med bay, she was actually in the captain's quarters which Ava had practically moved into, and she was just standing over the bed to place a kiss on her sleeping girlfriend's head before she went to get them breakfast.

However, the image came to an end when she felt a hand on her shoulder and she opened her eyes to the noticeably pale skin of Ava's forehead.

"Sara…" Amaya said softly.

The captain turned to look at the other woman and she briefly thought back to what she did when Stein had died. She had kissed his forehead and then marched out of the room to go and kill some Nazis. When she had learned of Laurel's death she marched to the Waverider and threatened Rip to let her kill Damien in the past. However, she knew that she couldn't do that now. She couldn't just march to go and attack Damien in the present because he would just kill her with his magic and Ava's sacrifice would have been for nothing. She couldn't try it in the past because it would go against everything that her girlfriend had stood for.

Tears began to run freely and she made eye contact with Amaya as she asked in a small voice, "what do I do now?"

s

-One week later-

"How is she today?" Nate asked as he sat down in the kitchen.

"She went to her girlfriend's funeral three days ago, how do you think she is?" Zari snapped.

Nate opened and closed his mouth a few times and Amaya placed her hand onto Zari's arm which seemed to relax her immensely. The entire team had been on edge, it was just like when Stein died, but there was no putting the grief into a repression box this time. Sara had tried for the first couple days, but it was obvious to anyone who knew her that she was crumbling and after a breakdown upon finding one of Ava's shirts in her room, she had given up any pretence of acting like everything was normal.

It was strange to see a woman who had been through so much collapse in tears, but everyone had their limits and it appeared as though Sara Lance had reached hers.

"I'm sorry, Nate," Zari sighed and smiled at Amaya gratefully, "she's still in her quarters but I got her to eat some breakfast this morning."

The man nodded and looked down to the counter and a silence filled the room.

It had been like this since the funeral. Initially, each Legend checked at Sara and they tried to do a couple low level anachronisms with Amaya as captain, but they hadn't done so since the funeral. Director Bennett had allowed Ava to be buried with full honours despite all of her protocol breaking and since she had no living family, the medals had been given to Sara which didn't seem to help.

Amaya had walked in on the captain wearing a certain white shirt staring at the medal more than a few times and it didn't become any less concerning the more she saw the sight. So now the team were kind of in limbo. None of them wanted to be the one to decide when Sara would be ready to start leading again and they found that they couldn't do the missions as well without her so they simply had to wait.

"There must be something that we can do!" Zari finally said, breaking the silence.

Nate, Ray, Amaya and even Mick looked at her questioningly, she had been thinking about this extensively and something just didn't feel right. It just didn't seem right that one woman would have to suffer so much and then have true happiness taken away from her, Zari had to believe that was some kind of anachronism.

"Maybe Sara should try going home?" Ray suggested, obviously not understanding what the totem holder meant.

"She is home," Mick husked and each Legend looked at him in surprise. He just grunted and looked back down to his beer as if nothing had happened.

"I know that," Ray sighed, "I just meant that maybe if she spent time with her mom or dad…"

"Where she would be reminded of Laurel," Amaya sighed.

"Well the Waverider reminds her of Ava," Nate replied. His eyes wandered over to the vacant stool between Amaya and Mick, there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that no one would sit in Agent Sharpe's chair.

"I don't mean that we should send her somewhere," Zari groaned, "I meant that…we should find a way to bring Ava back."

Each member of the team looked at her in shock and she rolled her eyes.

"You know that we can't do that, Zari," Amaya said softly. She knew that Zari still very much believed in her hacking history theory since there was a part of her that saw it as her only chance to bring her brother back, but the rest of the Legends knew that it wasn't an option. If it was then Rip's wife and son would be a live and so would Martin.

"Why not?" Zari shot back, "why should an Agent of the Time Bureau have to stay dead? Why can't we just use this time ship to bring her back?"

"Because we don't know what could happen," Nate sighed, "Ava took that bullet for Sara, if she wasn't there then…"

The man trailed off and allowed the implications to hang in the air, this time the silence in the room was far more oppressive.

Zari took in a shaky breath and looked down at the counter as she let out a ragged breath.

"Hey, it's okay," Amaya said softly and brought an arm around the other totem-holders shoulder so that she could pull her into a half hug. The other woman finally allowed the tears to fall down her cheek and she shook her head.

"It's not fair, why should Sara have to go through so much for this to happen? She's a fucking hero!"

"I know," Amaya said softly and ran her hand over the other woman's back. She didn't say anymore because she honestly didn't have an answer, it wasn't fair. She was sure that she had never seen the captain smile so much as she had since she and Ava had started dating and she now couldn't help but think that she would never see the same smile again.

After a few moments, though she realised that the tears were not just for their bereaved captain, "I miss Ava, too," she said.

Zari tensed and swallowed hard at the same time. Even if Agent Sharpe was still technically a member of the Time Bureau when she died, she spent far more time with the Legends than she did at the office, she could count the number of missions they had been on without her since the pirate thing on one hand. Even if she was sure that the old Ava Sharpe would hate her even thinking this, she really had become one of the Legends and Zari was beginning to understand the grief her team had felt for Stein (she had of course been sad, but she hadn't really known the man that long).

"It's not fair," she repeated and Amaya nodded and pulled her closer so that she could continue to silently cry.

Nate and Ray exchanged a look as if they were considering if they should be saying anything, but they both just looked over to Amaya who smiled sadly at them.

"Could you please call Mrs Lance?" she asked and they nodded.

s

_"Are you wearing my shirt?"_

_Sara grinned and stretched out on the bed as she looked at the woman who walked into the room covered only in a towel._

_"It smells like you," the captain replied as she sat up to look more fully at her girlfriend who was staring back with a quirked eyebrow._

_"I was gone for ten minutes," Ava laughed._

_Sara reached over to grab her hand and pull her down to the bed, "ten minutes is far too long," she replied as she began peppering kisses down her neck, progressively getting further down._

_Ava lifted her head to give more access as she groaned, but her mind seemed to catch up with what was going on and she pulled away. Sara pouted and she just rolled her eyes._

_"I have work, babe," she said firmly, because this had made her late for the last two days.._

_Sara just pouted more and the agent leaned over to kiss it away._

_"If I get fired, they will take my Time Courier away and I couldn't be your girlfriend anymore."_

_"I obviously would steal it back and you could become a full-time Legend," Sara grinned._

_"Why do your solutions always involve theft?" Ava sighed._

_"Because it works," Sara shrugged._

_"Give me my shirt," Ava laughed, "I have an early meeting."_

_"Fine," Sara sighed and pulled the shirt off to reveal that she had taken off the tank top she had been wearing when Ava had left for her shower._

_The taller woman stared at Sara's bare front as she held out the shirt to her girlfriend, "what?" she asked innocently._

_Ava blinked a couple of times before she dropped the towel and leaned forward to capture the woman's lips in her own. Between kisses, she said, "I can be a little late."_

Sara smiled as she opened her eyes, but the smile quickly fell away when her eyes landed on the framed medal hanging on her wall. 'For exceptional bravery and dedication to the Time Bureau, awarded to the late Agent Ava Sharpe'. A pit formed in her stomach when she realised that her dream was a memory and she turned her head so that she could put her nose to the collar of the shirt. It no longer smelt like the agent but just feeling the 'polyblend' made her feel better for a spilt second, but always only for a split second.

She couldn't help but think that this was not how she should be dealing with the death of her girlfriend. If this had happened to Nyssa, she would have been tracking down her killer to the end of the world until she could take their head on a spike to Ras al Ghul. There would be no changing time if she killed Damien Dhark now since this was a version who had already died in 2017, but she just couldn't bring herself to feel vengeful. She knew that killing him would not bring Ava back, she would just be right back to where she was now, without the woman she loved beside her in bed.

Sara closed her eyes against the tears that she knew were about to come. After her breakdown upon finding the shirt she was wearing, she had thought that there was no way that she could possibly cry anymore, but she soon found out that she was wrong.

A few minutes passed as they did every morning as she tried to decide what she would do that day. She had gotten into a cycle of thinking that she could try and do a low-level anachronism to try and get back into her life, but then she remembered the last mission she had been on. She still had people she loved on this ship and if she lost any of them, she wasn't sure that she would even be able to wake up anymore.

With a deep breath, she pulled the shirt closer to her body and decided that there was no way that she would be going on a mission today, but there was something else she could do. Based on the volume of times that she had been checked on, she knew that the Legends were worried about her. Just this morning, she had managed to eat a little bit of toast before she went back to sleep. Zari had actually smiled when she did, so she figured that she could try and do something to prove to them that their captain had not become an invalid.

Other than using the bathroom, she hadn't left her quarters, which left it up to her friends to bring her food and drink, she could go and get something herself.

The blonde took a deep breath and stared over to the side of the bed that was perfectly made. She used to sleep bang in the middle of the bed when she was single, but her body now naturally stayed on the left, which meant that Ava's side went untouched. The ex-assassin closed her eyes when she realised that she had once again thought of it as 'Ava's side' and she pushed herself out of the bed.

She shakily waked out of the room. She wasn't exactly sure what she needed but she knew that she needed to get out the room for at least a few minutes.

She slowly made her way to the kitchen, trying not to think about all of the memories with Ava that each room of the Waverider held but that didn't stop them coming to mind. Their first kiss in the Library. Where they had shared rum floats and basically agreed to go on a second date. The countless movie nights that they had spent with the other Legends where Sara had sat on Ava's lap even though there were plenty of seats.

Sara felt her breath coming out in short breaths and she knew that she was close to having a panic attack. The League had taught her how to deal with them, be strong enough to ignore the anxiety and get on with the task at hand, but she wasn't a member of the League of Assassins anymore. She was Captain Sara Lance, and wasn't she supposed to be a completely different person?

It was for this reason, that she leaned her back against the wall just outside of the kitchen and tried to control her breathing. She had no problem with her team seeing her emotional anymore, but the whole point of leaving the room was to go and let them know that she was making positive steps and it wasn't exactly reassuring if she walked in with her cheeks stained and her breath ragged.

However, before she could even attempt to calm down, she heard a familiar voice float out of the doorway, though it was not one that she was used to hearing on the ship.

"How is she?" the woman asked.

There was a silence of a couple seconds, before Amaya replied, "about what you would expect."

Sara frowned and pushed herself from the wall to go to the door. All of the Legends were scattered around the kitchen, but there was a woman stood in the middle of the room with her back to her and her arms crossed.

Sara had been surprised when she discovered that her father had told Dinah Lance all about her time traveling shenanigans and that the woman had been okay with it, but it had certainly made it easier to introduce Ava to her and Quentin. Even if their relationship had been based on not being normal, dinner with her parents and her girlfriend where they exchanged pleasantries and even talked about Laurel fondly as the night went on, was the most normal that Sara had felt in a long time and she loved it. Mostly because she could see how happy her parents were that she was dating someone who made her so happy. Ava had even withstood her fathers warnings that he should never hurt his 'baby girl' without laughing.

"Mom?" she asked, her voice was very raspy from misuse, but it must have been loud enough for all of the people stood in the room to hear her.

The woman turned around at the sound and her eyes trailed over daughter for a moment. Sara knew that she must look a mess with her unbrushed hair in sweatpants and a shift that she'd had on for five days (apart from for the funeral) but the look on her mother's face almost made it worse somehow. It was pure love, but it was also mixed with a certain amount of pity.

Sara swallowed hard as she realised that the last time she had seen her mother was when she and Ava had visited her, it must have been quite disconcerting to go from the happiest she had ever seen her to this.

"Oh Sara," Dinah sighed, obviously upset by the sight of her daughter.

Sara looked between each member of her team as she tried to figure out if she was mad or not, but when she turned back to her mother she was suddenly pulled back to the days on Lian You when she wanted was her mother to envelop her in a hug and never let her go.

"Mom," she said again as she crossed the room and crashed into her shoulder and the woman instantly brought her arms around her, "it's okay, baby," she cooed and rubbed a circle on her daughter's back.

The captain's shoulders shook as she cried into her mother, holding onto her for dear life.

Amaya jerked her head to the others in the room who seemed to understand what she meant as they began to make their way towards the exit.

Dinah smiled at the totem holder who nodded back and made her way out of the room.

The professor had of course been surprised to discover that she had a missed call off a ship after one of her lectures, but once she listened to it, she didn't hesitate in responding. Sara hadn't even told her what had happened and she had felt a small piece of herself crumble at the news that the lovely woman who was Ava Sharpe had died. Even if she had only met her once, she had already been planning holidays where Sara would bring her girlfriend (maybe eventually more than that?). Since Laurel's death, Dinah found that there was nothing that she dreaded more than Christmas (and Sara's birthday) and Thanksgiving, but it wasn't quite so daunting after meeting Ava. For the first time in years, Sara had a reason to come home. Now the image felt unreachable.

She slowly led her daughter over to the counter and sat her down on one of the stools and ran her thumb over the younger woman's cheek to wipe the tears away.

Some days she missed the girl who left on the Queen's Gambit all those years ago, back when her family was strong and stable. She knew for a fact that she still loved Sara whether she was a bar tender or the ex-assassin captain of a time ship, but she knew which version of her daughter had been more open and happier and not hardened by trauma. She never thought that she would again see the girl who just wanted her mother, but it destroyed her that these were the circumstances under which the girl would make an appearance again.

"It's okay," she said again.

Sara shook her head and looked down at her lap. She was still crying but it wasn't the body racking crying from a few moments ago, "it can't be," she said.

Dinah smiled sadly and sat down next to the younger woman who promptly placed her head on her shoulder. She may have been willing to show the other Legends just how upset she was, but she hadn't actually found herself thinking about talking to any of them about it. With her mother, however, she wasn't sitting next to someone who depended on her to be their captain, who needed her to start feeling better so they could go back to fixing time.

"I really miss her, mom," she said into her shoulder.

"I would be worried if you didn't," Dinah replied as she brought her arms around her daughter's shoulder and pulled her in closer, "but think about what Ava would have wanted."

Sara groaned and looked up to her mother, "you're really tell me what she would have wanted?"

"No," Dinah replied, "I only met her once, I'm asking you what you think Ava would say to you right now?"

Sara frowned, but a smile tugged at the corner of her lips as a few possibilities began going through her head, all in Agent Sharpe's voice.

"She would probably say, 'I died for you, jerk, now stop wasting time and fix the timeline your ridiculous team broke," Sara laughed, though there was a hint of a sob in the sound.

Dinah frowned and paused her hand motion of stroking her blonde hair.

"You broke time?" she asked.

"I didn't tell you?" Sara asked as she pushed off the other woman's shoulder and looked at her more fully, she sniffed as she wiped some tears from her face.

"No…"

"Oh…well the Legion of Doom had the Spear of Destiny, so we travelled back from an altered reality to when they originally got it. We met the versions of ourselves who tried to stop them the first time and we caused a time storm by trying to time travel," Sara explained, "the Time Bureau was created to fix what we broke…didn't dad tell you all of this?"

Dinah blinked a couple of times but she just shook her head and just decided that she could be one of those parents who didn't quite understand her child's job, it wasn't like she could tell anyone about how proud she was about her time travelling daughter anyway.

"I doubt he understood enough to explain it, dear," she laughed and Sara actually smiled more than she was frowning for once in a week.

"Thanks for coming, mom," Sara sighed and placed her head back on her shoulder.

"Of course," Dinah replied, "any time you need."

s

-Two months later-

"Yes!" Ray exclaimed and fist pumped the air.

Zari popped up from the couch, "you did it?"

The Atom nodded and lifted up a vial of green liquid, "this is an antidote that also makes her immune to Dhark's poison," he grinned widely.

"What are you doing?" Zari jumped and looked to see Amaya standing at the entrance to the lab. The woman had officially become the captain after Sara decided that she would need some time away from the team. She promised to return whenever she felt ready and as far as the Legends knew, she was staying with her mom in Central City. Despite the absence of the blonde, Amaya had refused to take over the captain's quarters since she was adamant that Sara could return at any moment, especially since the team didn't feel the same without her. Amaya might have been the most mature person alongside Sara, but she knew that she didn't make a very good captain, or at least not as good as Sara.

"We…" Zari began but trailed off when she realised that she couldn't come up with a lie.

"Gideon," Amaya called.

"Yes Captain Jiwe?" the AI asked.

Amaya still looked very much uncomfortable when Gideon called her that but the computer was adamant that she needed there to be a captain onboard so that she was aware of what the chain of command was. She promised to stop the moment Sara came back.

"Can you tell me what they have been doing in here for the last two months?"

"Miss Tomaz has been running simulations and Mr Palmer has reverse engineered an antidote to the poison Damien Dhark's bullet from a sample of Agent Sharpe's blood."

Amaya scowled at the pair of them and asked, "and why would they be doing that?"

Zari took a deep breath, she had been planning to present this to the team rather than just Amaya since she was sure that she would need Mick and Nate to help her convince the woman that she was right.

"Okay, do you promise me that you will just listen before you start telling me that I'm wrong?"

Amaya narrowed her eyes but nodded anyway as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"So, I have been running simulations of how we're going to defeat Mallus and the thing is…we can't," the totem-holder said, "no matter how we do things differently, something always happens which means that Mallus wins and the whole team dies. It doesn't matter if Sara's captain or if you are, or if Constantine and Wally are there or not, we always lose."

"It's just a simulation, Zari," Amaya sighed, "you know that we can find another way…"

"That's exactly my point, Amaya," Zari almost shouted, she had planned on having more time to formulate her speech. "I changed one thing in each simulation and the outcome was different…"

"And what was that?"

"Ava," she said simply, "with Ava around, Sara won't give into Mallus's possession, she has someone who can ground her and bring her out of it, which is exactly why Mallus ordered Damien to kill Ava."

"He was aiming for Sara," Amaya deadpanned, though she was feeling hope rise within her, even if she had been trying to the one who stayed strong for the team, she missed Ava and the Sara she had known only a couple months ago.

"Sara would have taken the bullet for Ava," Ray piped up, "he knew that they would protect each other."

"Okay…but then her death would have been an anachronism and Gideon would have detected it…"

"I'm afraid I have an explanation for that captain," Gideon supplied, "the anachronism map is supplied by the Time Bureau, it would seem that they have decided to omit a Level 15 from the map as Miss Tomaz discovered upon hacking their mainframe."

Amaya closed her eyes in frustration, mostly because she was annoyed that she had never seriously considered this possibility before.

"Director Bennett is in Mallus's pocket?"

"Exactly," Ray said, "and this will make Ava immune to the poison so that she won't die when she gets shot."

"And how do we give that to her?" Amaya sighed.

"Well, it's most effective a year after the initial injection so we just need to go back and give it to her in a way that won't change time…" Ray frowned.

"And let me guess, you've ran simulations for that as well?" Amaya asked.

"Yep," Zari replied practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. When she had spoken to Ray about her plan the month before, he had been more than willing to help her, but she hadn't imagined that she would have been able to convince Amaya to go along with it so soon. "The Time Bureau do annual physicals, so we just have to go and give it to her while pretending to be a doctor."

"She would know who we are and then she would report us."

"I wasn't in any of the files about the Legends," Zari shot back, "I wear a mask and she won't recognise me later."

"Don't you think you should talk to Sara about this first?" Amaya asked, she was trying to come up with reasons to say no, but Zari was being oddly reasonable. Every possible objection had an answer, but she just couldn't push past the thought that this would be too easy, especially since it had been all she had wanted for the last nine weeks.

Zari looked down at her feet and shook her head, "if it doesn't work…"

"She might never come back to the ship if we got her hopes up for nothing," Ray clarified.

Amaya bit her lip in thought.

Gideon would have told her if Zari's simulations were wrong and her 'hacking history' had proven effective in the past. Plus, she had also been consumed by the thought that Ava's death had to be an anachronism. There was no way that Sara Lance had been to hell and back just to go back to hell, she deserved more than that, she deserved to be happy.

"Okay, I guess we have to try it."

s

Sara's head lolled against the back of the couch and she continued to watch the mind-numbing reality show. It may not have been the most productive thing that she could have been doing, but she wasn't wearing Ava's shirt or staring at that stupid medal. Even if every little thing reminded her of the woman she loved and how she should be with the Legends, she trusted Amaya.

Repression hadn't worked too well for her in the past so she decided that it was finally time to take some time away from everything that she had been going through in the last ten years. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would be going back to the team soon, since Ava would have killed her if she knew that she was leaving 'their children' to their own devices, but right now, she just wanted to watch TV and drink the hot cocoa that her mom brought to her at regular intervals when she wasn't at work.

She pulled the blanket closer around her body and burrowed further into the couch as she yawned. It was five pm, which meant that her mother would be getting home from work soon and would start to suggest things that they could do together. Most of the time, Sara refused and said that she was too tired, but occasionally she could agree to go to the movies or the supermarket just because she knew that her mom was worried about how pale she had gotten from watching TV all day.

Today, though, she already knew that she would refuse since she had been kept up most of the night by nightmares. Without Ava, she had found that the nightmares she used to have on a nightly basis were coming back with a vengeance, though they were now mixed in with her girlfriend's death as well.

Sara heard the key turn in the lock and she looked over to the door to smile at the woman coming through the door, which she left open behind her.

"Hey," she said, but she frowned when she saw that her mother wasn't alone.

Dinah looked distinctly shocked, as if she had seen a ghost and Sara's frown deepened as she looked between her and Amaya and Zari.

"Mom…what's wrong?" she asked.

"I…I'm probably not the best person to explain, dear…" she sighed, she looked like she was getting a headache from whatever she had just been told which meant that it was probably something to do with time travel.

"Okay…" Sara said and looked over to Amaya expectantly.

Amaya took a moment to take in how weird it was to see Sara Lance look so normal, but she knew that it wouldn't last long once she told her. She couldn't contain the smile from spreading across her face.

"Okay, Sara, this is going to sound very irresponsible…but we did something and it will make sense when we explain it…" Amaya said.

"What did you do?" Sara sighed and turned to look at Zari.

"We hacked history," Zari said simply.

Sara looked over to her mom who was actually smiling now and she stood from the couch cautiously.

"Zari…you can't just change history, we talked about this," she said slowly, though she felt something resembling anxiety and excitement in her stomach. She had a feeling that she knew what they were talking about but she didn't want to dare to hope that she could be right.

"Okay so 'hack' is the wrong word," Amaya cut in, "it was an anachronism that the Time Bureau hid from us."

Sara swallowed hard and started shaking her head, there was no way that this could be what she thought it was. There was no way that history actually wanted her to have something good right?

Amaya smiled at the hopeful looking blonde. Actually giving Ava the injection had been surprisingly easy. They had returned to 2018 to a very much alive Ava on the Waverider. She looked very confused since she remembered dying and then had suddenly appeared in an empty med bay. Zari had hoped that they would return to find Ava and Sara just sat together, but apparently because of the amount of times everyone involved had traveled through time, it wouldn't work like that. They would always remember the alternate timeline.

Sara opened and closed her mouth a few times before she asked, "what are you saying?"

"Ava's death was an anachronism that Director Bennett hid from Gideon on Mallus's orders because he needed you to be weak enough so he can possess you again," Zari replied.

"Possessed? Again?" Dinah repeated, but Sara didn't seem to register the horrified note in her mother's voice.

"Ava is…alive," she said, like she was trying out the words to make sure that they made sense.

Zari just smiled wider and nodded quickly and Sara looked over to Amaya who was matching the other totem-holder's smile.

"But…" Sara trailed off and looked over to her mother to make sure that this wasn't some kind of dream. Her dreams were generally only memories, occasionally good ones but more often the bad ones, which meant that it didn't really make sense that she would dream something so hopeful. "But…we can't change time…"

"Sometimes your ridiculous team changes things for the better."

Sara tore her eyes away from her teammates and mother and over to the door which she was now only noticing was still open and someone one had stood onto the threshold. She would later realise that the agent must have been waiting for Amaya and Zari to explain things to her, but in that moment all she could do was stare at the blonde.

She was wearing black tight jeans, converse and a red checkered shirt with her hair down and Sara felt her breath catch in her throat. The bloody shirt was no longer the last thing that she had to see her girlfriend wearing.

The assassin was across the room faster than anyone could have thought possible and Ava was ready to catch the shorter woman.

Ava lifted her up to accept the kiss and Sara's legs wrapped around her abdomen tightly.

Sara felt tears fall down her cheeks as her lips moved against the other woman's and she she allowed herself to focus on the way that Ava's hands supported her waist. She finally released the agent's lips and burrowed her face into the agent's neck.

The taller woman hugged her tightly before she relaxed her arms to silently tell the captain to release her legs from her waist. Sara did so reluctantly but as her feet the ground her face remained tucked tightly into Ava's neck as she continued to sob silently, both from pure happiness and shock.

"It's okay," Ava whispered into her ear, "I'm here."

s

-One months later-

_Sara Lance stood and watched helplessly as she felt herself being held in place by the unfortunately familiar magic. Nora Dhark pulled out a gun and aimed it straight at her._

_The sound of the bullet leaving the chamber filled the battlefield and Sara closed her eyes as she accepted her fate. However, when no pain pierced her body, she opened her eyes and saw the back of a suit jacket in front of her, before its owner crumpled to the ground._

_"Ava!" she shouted._

"Sara?"

The captain of the Waverider's eyes flew open and she pushed herself up into a seating position as she took heaving breaths.

She looked around the room, expecting to find herself in a white shirt and a medal on the wall, but instead, she felt a hand on her elbow.

"Sara," Ava repeated, though this time her voice was far less groggy, "it's okay."

The blonde turned around to look at the woman beside her and she felt the void in her stomach fill with relief as she leaned down to press her lips against her girlfriend's.

She leaned away and placed her head on her shoulder and the agent brought her hand up so that she could stroke the other woman's hair softly. This had happened almost every night for the first couple of weeks since they had returned to the Waverider, but Sara was now finding that it no longer happened every night.

She was finally getting used to the idea of having her girlfriend again and Ava had explained to her that the memories of the alternate timeline would eventually fade from her consciousness, which she honestly couldn't wait for, as well as eventually kicking the shit out of Director Bennett when she could prove that he was in league with Mallus.

"Go back to sleep, baby," Ava whispered and placed a kiss to her forehead.

"I love you so much," Sara replied as her eyes began to shut, her voice as vulnerable as it only was with Ava, "I don't think I could handle it if this happened again…"

"I'm sure your team would just hack history again if it did," the agent replied.

Sara actually allowed herself to laugh at this and she burrowed further into her girlfriend, who had better be there for the rest of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wasn't really happy with the ending, but I couldn't spend any more time on this so I hope you liked it anyway :)  
> Reviews would be much appreciated


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